Film Review - The Good Dinosaur (2015)

The Good Dinosaur is the latest Pixar production and takes place in a world where the Dinosaurs were not wiped out and a young dinosaur named Arlo must face his fears and find his way back home after he gets lost in a storm, along the way he meets a young native boy named Spot and the two become friends on a great adventure home.

This movie sadly is further proof that Pixar has lost its way, the trend began with Cars 2 in 2011 and continued with 2012's Brave and 2013's Monsters University but while this year's Inside Out saw the group return to its former glory this film sees them go right back down the wrong path and there are two key reasons for this:

- The first of these is that the storytelling, the one ingredient Pixar prides itself on when making their films falls very very far from the mark, so much of this film feels like a series of shorts the type of which they traditionally show before their feature productions strung together as if on a bulletin board during the storyboard phase to try and make this a coherent storyline that you can follow but all I felt was bored throughout and it just also got more and more predictable in terms of what was going to happen as large chunks of it feel ripped off from the Lion King.

- The second key reason is that Arlo himself was very unlikeable and at times very very annoying with his high pitched voice and constant screaming and endless scenes of him being scared and running away all the time and this again is another signature of Pixar: Compelling and Colourful Characters that we come to care about.

Think of the Toys in the Toy Story trilogy, the Rat in Ratatouille, the Emotions in Inside Out, Dory in Finding Nemo, Frozone and the Incredibles and even Lightning McQueen in the first Cars film and Finn McMissile in Cars 2 which was probably the only thing I liked from that film whereas here with the exception of Spot I didn't care all that much about the characters and coming from this studio you have to say that it stings a little bit that they fumbled the ball in this way.

And that was the one thing I just kept thinking about when I walked out of the cinema after it ended, the fact that Pixar who have prided themselves on doing the following:

- Colourful and Compelling Characters
- An Emotional Core that makes People Want to Cry
- Strong Storytelling where Nothing is left to Chance
- Bold Story Concepts that make us Interested in seeing the Movie

And bringing all 4 of those elements together in a way that both the kids and the adults can enjoy and indeed in their golden run of 1999-2011 they did just that, they set the standard for this genre after Disney lost their way and Dreamworks struggled to get off the ground post Shrek and they raised for the bar for their competitors so high none of them came within cooee of reaching it, to see them stumble so badly like this it should make every film fan let Sadness take the controls for a couple of moments.

And so that was the Good Dinosaur to wrap up 2015 at the movies and sadly it ends on a bit of a downer but don't worry 2016 is a coming round the corner and with it APOCALYPSE AHHHHHHHHHH but that aside skip this film as it's not very good, 1 out of 5.